Little kid, big church, bigger God
Lori Borgman | Monday, Dec 21, 2009
Most
everybody has a favorite Christmas memory from childhood. The nice thing about
memories is that they are easily accessible. All you have to do is close your
eyes.
When I was a little kid, we went to a big Methodist church, a massive
building of red brick and stone that occupied a full city block in the heart of
downtown. The church had arched doors, a domed ceiling, a narthex, a nave, a
chancel and a lot of other nooks and crannies with names that sounded like
pieces of a knight’s armor.
The Sunday
school rooms were in the basement, which was a maze of shadowy hallways.
Children with a decent sense of fear were compelled to run down those halls as
fast as their legs would carry them. But you couldn’t run far. Those were the
days when adults didn’t hesitate to tell any kid, not just their own kid, “No
running in the house of God!”
I always
felt badly about running in God’s house, but because the hallways were long and
dark, I hoped that God understood. (I later learned God didn’t actually reside
in that downtown building and was in fact omnipresent, transcending the church
basement, the city limits and even the state line.)
They did a Christmas pageant the year I was 5 and I was given a part. I
wasn’t Mary or anything like that. Mary was always a blue-eyed, towhead blonde.
I had brown eyes and my hair was dishwater blonde which meant I had no chance of
a starring role. I hesitate to say this, but Mary was aloof. Even at age 10 a
good role could go to a girl’s head.
I was a shepherd lined up at the back of the church with fellow shepherds
wearing makeshift robes, headpieces and rope belts.
When the scriptures say the shepherds were terrified, they are entirely
accurate. The church loomed even larger and more ominous at night. We were to
make our way down one of the long and dark side aisles to the manger, which was
beside the towering pulpit and at the foot of the massive pipe organ. It would
be a frightening walk to Bethlehem. My hope was to make it without disgracing
myself.
On cue, we began slowly shuffling forward. And then, something curious
happened along the way. The congregation in the pews was no longer
intimidating. The darkness no longer mattered and the narrator’s booming voice
faded to a soft whisper. Mary didn’t look so smug anymore and Joseph was paying
rapt attention.
Some very trusting young mother had allowed the church ladies to borrow her
newborn child to be placed in the manger, which now glowed under the warmth of a
golden light.
That Christmas pageant gave birth to belief. The text in the gospel of Luke
became entirely possible -- they would indeed, “find a baby wrapped in cloths
and lying in a manger.”
That year, and many years following, I went to sleep on Christmas Eve with a
sense of awe and wonder -- not that reindeer paws would click on the roof, or
that Santa would slide down the chimney, but that in a small sliver of night
long ago and far away, the curtains of Heaven parted and the Son of God was born
in a stable.
